The contemporary global order is complex and hybrid, driven by the parallel trends of globalisation and increasing transnational governance, but also economic multipolarity, and the return of overt great power competition. The American debate has predominantly focused on how to maintain US hegemony in the face of the rise of China, and consequently the effects of these systemic changes are insufficiently recognised. Particularly the role of domestic politics in all the major geostrategic regions is overlooked. Most striking is the backlash to political, cultural, and economic globalization, which has led to ‘friendly disinterest’ at best or a revival of nationalism at worst. Consequently, the willingness to surrender sovereignty to multilateral frameworks has diminished. Simultaneously, the political-military integration is unbalanced in most major states due to the changing societal roles of the armed forces. In short, the domestic bases for long-established strategic doctrines are undergoing major changes. These concurrent developments are therefore leading to strategies which either overemphasise military means (US), are ignorant of them and underemphasize them (most of the EU, excepting Great Britain and France), or risk using them as symbols of growing nationalism and historical resentments (Asia), leading to alternately overstretch, dependence, and uncertainty. The grand strategic match between diplomatic, military, and other means has lost the coherence of the Cold War years and those that immediately followed it. This paper argues that this lack of coherence is visible in all the major centres of global political and economic power and is likely to further undermine the current multilateral institutionalist order, increasing the likelihood of miscalculation and instability.
